Tag Archive | NASA

Rings that remind me of things: Part 23

Part 23 of an occasional series about rings in my Etsy shop that remind me of things.

Ring:

1972 blue lace agate ring by Peter Guy Watson. For sale in my Etsy shop, Inglenookery: click on photo for details.

Thing:

Jupiter. Photographed in ultraviolet by the Hubble Space telescope, and rotated by me so it better matches the ring. Playing god, me? From the fabulous NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) series.
Image credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble; Processing & licence: Judy Schmidt.

So far I have had rings that remind me of an Iron Age hillfort, an alien spaceship, a cream horn, a radio telescope, Noah’s Ark, an octopus tentacle, spider eyes, Pluto and its moon Charon, the rings of Saturn, The Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh, some lichen, the stepped Pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara in Egypt, the Quality Street lady, a herb knife, a sea anemone, an Iron Age miniature votive shield, the Mayan Temple of Kukulkan at Chichén Itzá in Mexico, a screw propeller from SS ‘Great Britain’, a pair of clackers, a morel, a dalek, and a chessboard.

Rings that remind me of things: Part 9

Jul15

Part 9 of an occasional series about rings in my Etsy shop that remind me of things.

Ring:

Banded agate ring. For sale in my Etsy shop: click on photo for details.

Thing:

Saturn’s rings, photographed by the Cassini Orbiter. Photo by NASA, cropped and flipped 180 degrees by me to match my ring. Click on photo for details.

So far I have had rings that remind me of an Iron Age hillfort, an alien spaceship, a cream horn, a radio telescope, Noah’s Ark, an octopus tentacle, spider eyes, and Pluto and its moon Charon.

UPDATE: The ring is now sold. Sorry!

Rings that remind me of things: Part 8

Apr19

Part 8 of an occasional series about rings in my Etsy shop that remind me of things.

Ring:

Vintage sterling silver bypass ring with two spheres. For sale in my Etsy shop: click on photo for details. (NOW SOLD).

Thing(s):

Pluto and its moon Charon. Photo composite made by Jcpag2012 from originals by Pat Rawlings and NASA.

So far I have had rings that remind me of an Iron Age hillfort, an alien spaceship, a cream horn, a radio telescope, Noah’s Ark, an octopus tentacle, and spider eyes.

21 APRIL 2016 UPDATE: The ring has now sold. Sorry!

Ground control to Major Tim

Jan15

Time to put your helmet on … Now it’s time to leave the capsule if you dare.

Tm Kopra on the left and Tim Peake on the left. ISSin the background.

Colonel Tim Kopra (US) on the left and Major Tim Peake (UK) on the right in the ISS.

The UK’s Major Tim Peake is, as I write, enjoying his first space walk outside the International Space Station. He has today become the first Briton to undertake a space walk under the British flag. Woop woop.

I heard at the end of BBC Radio 4’s World at 1 a lovely exchange as Tim stepped out of the ISS:

Tim Peake: Okay, I’m coming out.

Tim Kopra: Okay.

TP: Beautiful sunset.

TK: Oh, I know.

Reid Wiseman: Tim, it’s really cool seeing that Union Jack go outside, since it’s explored all over the world, now it’s explored space.

TP: It’s great to be wearing it, a huge privilege. A proud moment.

That was a really nice touch by Reid Wiseman, the astronaut guiding Tim Peake and Tim Kopra from mission control at NASA.

The 6-hour long space walk is being live blogged by the BBC, but even better, you can watch it live on NASA Television.

And just because:

How Pluto got its name

Jul21

I was so happy at the recent fantastic news from the New Horizons probe as it flew past Pluto and showed us what the dwarf planet really looks like (it’s incredible to think that only a fortnight ago, we had a blobby pixelated view; now we can see features 1 km in size). It’s yet another amazing achievement by NASA.

Pluto, photographed by the New Horizons probe on 13 July 2015.

I listened with interest to the 15 July episode of the BBC Radio 4 Inside Science series that was dedicated to the recent Pluto news. Among the items was a small feature on how Pluto got its name. I had heard this story before but it still gives me pause for thought: Pluto was named by an 11-year-old English schoolgirl, Venetia Phair (née Burney) (11 July 1918 – 30 April 2009).

Venetia Burney, aged 11.

So how did an English schoolgirl come to name the planet?

Pluto was discovered on 18 February 1930 by American astronomer Clyde Tombaugh, who was working at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. Tombaugh was searching Planet X, a hypothetical planet beyond Neptune, the existence of which had been predicted by Percival Lowell and William Pickering. Pluto’s discovery was made public on 13 March 1930. At the time, Venetia lived in Oxford, with her mother and maternal grandparents. Her grandfather, Falconer Madan (1851 – 1935) had previously been the Librarian of the Bodleian Library of the University of Oxford, and at the time was a noted scholar of the life and works of Lewis Carroll. Over breakfast on 14 March 1930, Madan read out about of the discovery in The Times.

The short piece in The Times, 14 March 1930, that Falconer Madan read out to Venetia Burney at breakfast. This news was tucked away on page 14 of the newspaper.

Here’s a transcript of part of a 2005 BBC interview with Venetia:

My grandfather said, ‘I wonder what they will call it?’ and I said, ‘Why not call it Pluto?’ or words to that effect, and my grandfather, on his way to the Bodleian Library, he dropped a note in at Professor H. H. Turner‘s house. Now he was an ex-Astronomer Royal, so Professor Turner cabled it out to Flagstaff, and I of course thought no more about it and didn’t hear anything about all of this, but the suggestion was taken as a good one, for various reasons, Pluto being a dark planet, god of the Underworld, and various other points, like P L for Pluto, P L for Percival Lowell. And so about three months later I heard that I was responsible for naming it, but I dare say other people thought of it even earlier but didn’t have the backup to cable and suggest it.

Unbeknownst to Burney, on 16 March Turner cabled the suggestion to the Lowell Observatory:

NAMING NEW PLANET PLEASE CONSIDER PLUTO, SUGGESTED BY SMALL GIRL, VEBTIA NURNEY, FOR DARK GLOOMY PLANET. TURNER.

Turner’s cable to the Lowell Observatory. Lowell Observatory Archives. Venetia’s name has somehow become mangled into Vebtia Nurney.

On 24 March the selection was made: every member of the Lowell Observatory was allowed to vote from a shortlist of three names (the other two were Minerva and Cronos), and Pluto won every vote. The announcement of Pluto’s name was made on 1 May 1930, and Venetia’s place in astronomical history was assured. She was invited to watch the launch of New Horizons from Cape Canaveral on 19 January 2006, but had to decline because it was too far for her to travel at her advanced age.

Venetia Phair in 2006.

Venetia was wonderfully modest about the whole matter: on being asked in an interview with NASA whether people in her home town (Epsom) knew of her role in history, she replied ‘ … on the whole, it doesn’t arise in conversation and you don’t just go around telling people that you named Pluto.’ Great British understatement at its finest!

Amazingly, Venetia’s family also made other contributions to the naming of celestial bodies: in 1877 her great-uncle, Falconer’s brother Henry Madan named the two Martian moons Phobos and Deimos.

Venetia has had a few tributes: an asteroid, 6235 Burney, is named after her, as is the American band The Venetia Fair, and perhaps most fittingly, one of the scientific instruments on New Horizons, a dust sensor, bears her name: the Venetia Burney Student Dust Counter (VBSDC).

The Venetia Burney Student Dust Counter (VBSDC). Now a very long way away from erth.

The Venetia Burney Student Dust Counter (VBSDC). Now a very long way away from earth; at one time in July 2015 just 12,500 km from Pluto.

Further information:

NASA’s New Horizons website

18 July 2015 io9 article summarising the New Horizons story so far

13 January 2006 BBC article about Venetia Phair

17 January 2006 NASA interview with Venetia Phair

MP3 of the above NASA interview

Happy birthday, Hubble

Apr24

Happy birthday to the Hubble Space Telescope, which today celebrates 25 years floating above us and sending back amazing images of space.

The HST was launched on board the Space Shuttle Discovery on 24 April 1990 and deployed into its orbit the following day. A flaw with the mirror was identified, leading to fuzzy images, but after a servicing mission the HST’s problem was corrected and it was soon sending back glorious, sharp images, the first of which were released by NASA on 13 January 1994.

The above video is an amazing visualisation made using data sent back by the HST of a fly through of nebula Gum 29, finishing at Star Cluster Westerlund 2.

Many years ago as a kid, I was so affected by the ending of the film Dark Star, where one of the characters ‘surfs’ on space debris. In the movie he goes down to his death, to burn up as he enters the atmosphere of a planet, but in my young imagination I always converted this to him surfing through space for eternity, seeing the wonders and marvels that at the time we could only dream of. Now, thanks to Hubble, those dreams are being magnificently realised.

Hubble Space Telescope 2014: Frontier Field Abell 2744. Photo by the magnificent, utterly wonderful NASA.

Once again, hurrah for NASA!

There’s a fantastic album of some of Hubble’s iconic images in this NASA-curated flickr album.

(As a space nut I love that Chap and I have been together just two days shy of Hubble’s time in space. Our first kiss was on 26 April 1990 and we have been kissing ever since.)

11 years on – Beagle 2 has landed!

Jan16

Earlier this week came the news that a joint NASA and UK Space Agency and Leicester University announcement about Beagle 2, the British-led Mars probe, would be made on Friday. I have been twitching all week—hoping so hard that the news would be good. And it is!

At last—Beagle 2 has been found! Such great news, courtesy of NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which sends back images of the planet’s surface from a height of between 250 and 316 km above Mars.

Beagle 2 on the Martian surface. Photo by HiRISE / NASA / Leicester University

The MRO scientists have been searching for it for years, and at long last they have found Beagle 2 at its Christmas Day 2003 landing spot at Isisdis Planitia. No message was ever received from the probe, and so it was assumed that it had crashed or somehow been destroyed or rendered unable to send back data. Its fate remained unknown.

Now we can see that Beagle 2 landed intact, and due to some of the solar panel-bearing ‘petals’ failing to unfold, it could not generate the energy needed to send back data.

Beagle 2 and landing equipment on Mars.

The lead scientist, Professor Colin Pillinger, sadly did not live to see this great day. He died last May, but is immortalised at a topographic feature on the surface of Mars: Pillinger Point.

Professor Colin Pillinger and a model of Beagle 2.

Professor Colin Pillinger and a life-size model of Beagle 2.

I wonder if the landing spot of Beagle 2 will be named after its most recent arrival?

(I should add that I bear no truck with talk of the Beagle 2 mission being a heroic failure. It was an incredibly difficult mission achieved on a miniscule budget, and it should be remembered how challenging a successful landing on Mars is—the success rate is 51%. So to have got so close to achieving the mission goals is to be celebrated. And as Prof. Pillinger himself said, in that wonderful, warm West Country accent of his—there are no failures, just experiences providing valuable data from which to learn and progress.)

Comet probe landing date set

Sep26

Clear your calendars! The date has been set—the NASA Philae landing probe from the European Space Agency Rosetta space satellite will attempt to land on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on Wednesday 12 November. With any luck the lander will successfully touch down at around 15:35 GMT, with confirmation due to arrive some time after 16.00 GMT.

Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Photo by Rosetta / ESA.

The landing site, known as ‘J’, has been carefully selected out of a shortlist of five potential sites. It is on the smaller of the comet’s two lobes (the head of the rubber duck).

Landing site J. Photo by Rosetta / ESA.

There is a high risk involved in such a tricky procedure. If successful, the lander will screw itself into position and then undertake some scientific analyses of the surface chemistry, drilling for samples and analysing them in an onboard laboratory. The scientists do not expect Philae to last much beyond next March as it will fail at some point due to overheating. Rosettta will stay in orbit for a year, sending back information as the comet moves in its elliptical orbit around the sun. Exciting (and nailbiting) times ahead. THE BBC article carries this caveat: The timings mentioned on this page carry some uncertainty and would change if subsequent mapping shows the J site to have a major problem, with Esa forced to shift its attention to the back-up destination, C.

Pillinger Point

Jul1

Pillinger Point, overlooking Endeavour Crater, Mars.

I look at various NASA websites regularly, and one set of missions on which I’m particularly keen are those currently operating on Mars. Of the two indomitable Mars Exploration Rovers, launched in June and July 2003, and both landed in January 2004, and only supposed to have a mission life of 90 sols (a sol is a Martian day, just a tad longer than ours at 24 hours and 39 minutes), Opportunity is still going. And then of course there’s the amazing Curiosity rover, launched in November 2011 and landed on Mars in August 2012. I got up very early to watch the landing live on the NASA webstream, and it was so exciting, learning that it had landed successfully after the complex landing procedure that involved the never-before used sky crane. My heart was in my mouth for a goodly while—but I bet that was nothing compared to what the project scientists were experiencing. I have also taken part in the citizen science project to classify (tag) images sent back to earth by Opportunity and its now sadly non-operational partner, Spirit.

I think part of the reason I am fascinated by Mars is that it is a desert planet, and I love deserts. Many of the photos in the Tag Mars citizen science project show a beautiful, desolate landscape, though occasionally you can see a dust devil caught as it passed by, or see the ripples of sand cut through by the rovers’ tracks. They could easily be the deserts in which I have worked in the Middle East. So familiar, and yet so other-worldly.

I checked recently on the progress of Curiosity and saw on 24 June it had taken a photo from a spot named Pillinger Point, overlooking Endeavour Crater. The brief text mentioned it was named after Professor Colin Pillinger, who died in May this year.

Professor Colin Pillinger (9 May 1943—7 May 2014).

Colin Pillinger was a British planetary scientist and one of the driving forces behind the Beagle 2 mission to Mars. Sadly that mission was not a success. Like Spirit, it too was launched in June 2003, but although it was deployed from the ‘mother ship’ for landing on Christmas Day 2003, communication was lost, and with it, the mission. I remember seeing footage of Professor Pillinger announcing that Beagle 2 was lost, and how absolutely destroyed he seemed. All those years of hard work, all that hope, all that potential for science, lost in a few moments.

Today there is a lovely piece on the BBC website about this photo and the naming of a topographic feature on Mars after Prof. Pillinger. It is written by Steve Squyres of NASA, who worked on the Spirit and Opportunity rovers and became a good friend of Prof. Pillinger’s. It’s a very touching tribute.

(Ahoy there mateys: I love too that Beagle 2 was named after the vessel, HMS Beagle, on which Charles Darwin conducted his historic and world-changing research; Endeavour Crater is named after the bark, HMS Endeavour, on which Captain Cook undertook his voyage of discovery to the southern hemisphere.)

Favourite websites: APOD

Jun28

After a couple of gloomy posts about the poor hedgehogs, I thought I should feature something wonderful and lovely and spirits-raising. And so … here’s a mention of one of my favourite websites to brighten things up: NASA’s APOD site, otherwise known as the Astronomy Picture of the Day.

It pretty much does what it says on the tin: every day it features a wonderful photo to do with the skies above us. Sometimes they are Hubble space telescope shots, sometimes they are photos by the legion of talented amateur photographers who photograph our skies by both day and night, sometimes they are photos taken from the International Space Station; whatever the source they are invariably beautiful shots that fill me with wonder and joy.

M16: Pillars of Creation. Pillars of evaporating gaseous globules emerging from pillars of molecular hydrogen gas and dust in the Eagle Nebula, which is associated with the open star cluster M16. Photo by J Hester and P Scowen.

I am completely unscientifically-minded, but I love learning about the natural world about us, whether it is the worlds beyond our planet, or the geology and meteorology of our own. NASA has some fantastic websites, and this is one of my favourites. Click on the links in the text written by professional astronomers that accompanies the photos, and have a truffle round in the archive (link at the bottom of the APOD page)—you’ll lose hours but you’ll learn so much!

The Milky Way, photographed at Bryce Canyon, Utah, USA. Photo by Wally Pacholka.

Sun with solar flare. 13 April 2013. Photo by NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory.

Crossing Dingo Gap on Mars, taken by the indefatigable Curiosity Rover near Mt Sharp on Mars.

Crossing Dingo Gap on Mars, taken by the wonderful Curiosity Rover near Mt Sharp on Mars.